i would add an additional item, and move it to the top of the list - companies that aim to track everything you do and aggregate that in one place. you could also add the gov't agencies that collude with them to track citizens. This would put FB and Goog tied at the top of the list. Not sure who is first, but they're both trying.

After clicking away your rights, you'll discover that you can only use Apple-approved iBullets, available from the App Store. Your iGun will only aim at pre-approved iTargets, and will be compatible only with licensed iHolsters, iCases, and serviceable at iDealers where you will be iReamed.

The iRevolution will not be iTelevised. Though it will be available for streaming on iTunes.

I believe this is the point that Sergey was making. He isnt talking about Googles search engine or online services, but the Android OS vs Apples OS
I believe Penny Arcade said it best.. context is important [penny-arcade.com].

the monopoly is accountable to you through your vote. it is an extension of your will, not an imposition of an alien will on you

in fact, if you were to remove the monopoly, there would be no absence of monopoly, the merchant would merely fill the power vacuum, and he isn't accountable to you. he's accountable to the quest for more profits, at any cost, including the raping of your freedom. then he buys the guns and points them at you:

Pinkerton's agents performed services ranging from security guarding to private military contracting work. At its height, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than there were members of the standing army of the United States of America, causing the state of Ohio to outlaw the agency due to fears it could be hired as a private army or militia.[citation needed] Pinkerton was the largest private law enforcement organization in the world at the height of its power.[2]During the labor unrest of the late 19th century and early 20th century, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to provide agents that would infiltrate unions, to supply guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories, and sometimes to recruit goon squads to intimidate workers. The best known such confrontation was the Homestead Strike of 1892, in which Pinkerton agents were called in to enforce the strikebreaking measures of Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie, who was abroad; the ensuing conflicts between Pinkerton agents and striking workers led to several deaths on both sides. The Pinkertons were also used as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

for the modern parable, see blackwater. what would blackwater become with no government already in place? the police, accountable to the corporation, not to you, which your real police department is

so your opinions and your views are illogical and historically wrong. they speak of a propagandized individual (corporate funded propaganda like fox news, the real threat to your freedom, not your government, which you VOTE for)

of course, where your government doesn't represent your will, it is because it is bought out by... corporate financial interests

heal YOUR government by removing the corporate infection, and understand the real threat to your freedom: the merchant you allude to

but make YOUR government your enemy, and see the corporate financial interests as harmless, and you are basically giving away your own hard won freedoms won by your forefathers (see pinkerton's above) to forces which have no interest in your freedoms at all, especially when your freedoms represent a threat to bottom line. then hiring goon sqwuads, with no government around to stop them, makes perfect capitalistic sense

there is your daily dose of anti-propaganda, i hope you aren't kneejerking too much right now

the people vote. that vote, the will of the people, expressed in aggregate, is what the policy of the government should be. what about that do you not understand? what about that concept is somehow not enough for you?

Its a theory because the wants of the citizens of the democracy are not heeded, though businesses can influence government without voting.

The metals lobby that keeps the penny in circulation despite massive public disapproval, is the tantamount example of the power of lobbies to distort democracy.... that is taught in polsci 101. Yes, its a theory. SOPA 2.0 or 3.0 will not have the popular oversight that 1.0 had, and when our reps know we disagree but arent looking, they will pass it for the lobbies.

Just because 100 million others disagree with you doesn't mean the system isn't working properly. The 100 million could be wrong, but that's Democracy for you. It's a better system than in North Korea where the Dictator and his Generals are the only ones with "votes".Democracy sucks but it's better than the alternatives. You don't like how the 100 million are voting, you and others like you should try to convince/educate the 100 million.

If you think all the candidates are bad, you can be a candidate. If you

would this be the government that is owned by the corporations and only do their will?

or the government as it should be, in the constitution, the one that is accountable to you?

or is this the government that exists in the minds of paranoid schizophrenics, which is out to rape your freedoms in some bad hollywood plot of sinister conspiracies and aliens who hate your freedom.... just because?

small hint: agent smith in the matrix isn't real, and to use him as the starting point for understanding the purpose and atittude of a democratic government is delusional and absurd. being too trusting is bad. a pathological lack of trust is also bad. that you fear your OWN government, and not your real enemy, the ones who will gladly rape your freedoms, who BUY your government and have them do things against your freedoms, and will gladly point the guns at you (see pinkertons) and are most clearly not accountable to you... well, it simply reveals how propagandized and foolish you are

oh you can use any fictional characer you want to make a parable out of anything

but most people understand there isn't an actual good witch glenda and there aren't actually flying monkeys

to believe there is is the same level of delusion to see so much malice in your own democratic government and so little malice in robber barons representing plutocracy (not capitalism, as the fanboys believe)

Greece can go bankrupt because it is in the Eurozone and not in direct control of its own money supply. The U.S. can avoid bankruptcy by simply printing more dollars. That has ill effects, but it is not going bankrupt.

Greece can go bankrupt because it is in the Eurozone and not in direct control of its own money supply. The U.S. can avoid bankruptcy by simply printing more dollars. That has ill effects, but it is not going bankrupt.

California could go bankrupt, but the FBI never will.

Simply printing new Dollars continuesly can get you in the 20000%+ inflationzone quite fast. And then you will be bankrupt anyway.

True, but that's because it's not actually a truly independent organization. It could however have its budget (the source of its income) cut enormously and be so forced into doing many things that would look distinctly like what companies do when in close-to-bankrupt scenarios.

Overall, governments can go bankrupt (though as noted individual agencies can't, in a formal sense) though the nature of that bankruptcy would vary. In the US, you're not allowed to just outright default on the debts (though I wouldn't really want to rely on getting my money back in a timely fashion if things were getting really bad) so you'd probably have to print your way out, which would stoke hyperinflation. The net result would be similar to a debt default though: nobody sane would lend to the US. You're not in that situation.

the monopolistic coercive government of which it is a part can certainly destroy the merchant at any time. See Lehman Bros and the old AT&T for just a few of many examples

OTOH, it's harder to influence a powerful merchant than a democratically-elected government; it can take a huge amount of coercion to make a company change its behavior.

and good for that. enforcement needs to exist in civilization, and better the guys with the guns be accountable to the guys you elect, rather than the guys who hold all the cash, and are accountable only to that cash

unfortunately, due to the prevalence of certain low iq and paranoid people loudly and firmly believing their own government is the enemy, the guys with the cash are having a field day weakening and buying off and infecting the only thing standing between them and more profits: your goverment. of course, those more profits mean some of your freedoms will have to go... don't worry, faux news will spin it in a manner that is easily digestible to the loud ignorant kneejerk cranks who will eat it up (because it's "fair and balanced" and not biased liberal media), who thing the guys with the cash are just darlings and can do no wrong

gilded age 2.0, here we come. when the pendulum swings the other way in a few more years, it will be vanguarded by the dying middle class fed up with less and less share of their pie so some billionaire can get a few millions more. i wonder where the loud ignorant faux news cranks who think the guys with the cash can do no wrong will be when the workers have to march again to protect their rights and a decent living. still believing faux news because of evil liberal media? even as they themselves can't afford to heat their house while the fat cats make more and more? when do the capitalism loving ignorant cranks wake up?

Whether they are corporatists or socialists, what they have in common is not just a distrust of people thinking for themselves, but a fear of it. They are paternalistic as hell, thinking only they know what is good for everybody. Big business and big government just recycle executives. They squabble about the details, but the essence is the same: Big Brother, victimless morality laws, and endless wars.

The solution is individual power. Of course, statists will say that is laissez-faire to the max, but th

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a coercive monopoly with guns is far worse than a mere merchant with a huge market share.

This is a stupid libertarian slogan. Merchants are the ones who gets laws passed to infringe on our rights without any guns. Merchants are the ones who screw up the economy and get away with it. Merchants are the ones with the money and political influence who control the government. If the gun-toting government were gone tomorrow, who do you think would arm themselves first and heaviest?

You know what? I prefer to be able to have a coercive monopoly that's within my control (which I'll happily pay a small percentage of) so that I don't have to face a coercive monopoly who can kill society without guns.

Libertarians are not the enemy of anyone except Big Brother. Their whole mantra is to leave people to their own devices.

You seem to think Big Business and Big Government are enemies of each other. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They are the same, differing only in tiny squabbles which distract voters. The last thing either wants is for people to actually run their own lives and take the corporations to task.

If you actually think the coercive monopoly is going to use their guns to help people battle merchants, you are living in some weird alternate dream world. The only merchants who get in trouble are the few who don't go along with the other merchants and their government buddies.

That's the weirdest thing about Occupy Wall Street. They identify half the problem, corporations out of control, but then they refuse to see the other half, which is Big Brother actively assisting them. They are one and the same, and the government will never do anything to the 1% just because a few 99% rabble camp out in parks and shout for the government to come rescue them. Only individuals taking charge and upsetting BOTH Big Government and Big Business will solve anything.

Libertarians are not the enemy of anyone except Big Brother. Their whole mantra is to leave people to their own devices.

You seem to think Big Business and Big Government are enemies of each other. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They are the same, differing only in tiny squabbles which distract voters. The last thing either wants is for people to actually run their own lives and take the corporations to task.

I never said Big Business and Big Government are enemies of each other.

If you actually think the coercive monopoly is going to use their guns to help people battle merchants, you are living in some weird alternate dream world.

And if you think that won't happen if the government disappears tomorrow, you're an idiot.

That's the weirdest thing about Occupy Wall Street. They identify half the problem, corporations out of control, but then they refuse to see the other half, which is Big Brother actively assisting them. They are one and the same, and the government will never do anything to the 1% just because a few 99% rabble camp out in parks and shout for the government to come rescue them. Only individuals taking charge and upsetting BOTH Big Government and Big Business will solve anything.

Note that none of what you said here actually opposes what I ACTUALLY said. What I was responding to was the stupid idea that a person could prefer Big Business rather than Big Government, when they are basically the same. That was my point, but you completely missed it so you can rant about Occupy Wall Street.

I prefer to be able to have a coercive monopoly that's within my control

False dichotomy. That's not even one of the options. The coercive monopoly, as you have said, is under the control of the merchants. That's why this is the thing that Libertarians have right. A large government has the power to control YOU. It has the time and energy to snoop on YOU and run YOUR life. We need the smallest federal government that can achieve its proper goals of maintaining the national defense and enabling (notpreventing) interstate commerce.

How is my suggestion a "false dichotomy" if it's not even one the options? The fact that it's not even one of the options is, by definition, NOT a false dichotomy.

Originally, there were two options: coercive monopoly with guns, and coercive monopoly without guns.

I presented a third option: a coercive monopoly which I'm in control of (in theory).

The ones with the false dichotomy are the libertarians. Small government is good, big government is bad. That's two options, and they're both false.

Libertarians don't have anything right. They don't realize that it's not a matter of big or small government. It's about those with the most resources and being able to throw their weight around. If it's not a democratically elected government, then it will be an undemocratically inherited company. One shrinks and another one grows to fill it. There is no magical barrier that prevents it from happening. What libertarians SHOULD be doing is identifying those who actually do have the power and limiting their power, not just attack anything that has the goverrnment label on it.

By getting rid of most of a democratically elected government as much as possible, you basically remove power from the people's hands. What libertarians should realize is rather than getting rid of the common man's last chance at power, they should encourage people to get more involved and informed and making government fulfill its duty.

I don't know about that. Sorry i can't remember the quote exactly or whom it was from but it went along the lines of "Give me two sentences written by a truly innocent man and I will find something with which to hang him" and with THAT much knowledge gathered frankly they could make anyone look like anything from a pervert to an idiot to a monster, just by leaving out pieces or removing context.

In any case knowledge is power and having that much data about individuals controlled by a single company is fr

I have always been amazed at this stupid "only the government counts" idea. A corporations can sue you for anything and drag the legal battle so long as to financially ruin you even if you are right. They can put you in some blacklist and make sure you never get a good job again. They can deny you credit and insurance. They have a million ways to make your life hell, and they can do it privately. They are unaccountable mini-dictatorships.

It's insane to trust corporations with privilegues you wouldn't trust the government with.

I don't think it counts as "collusion" if information is given over due to a court order.

The question, as always, is what is done with the information collected. Google says in their privacy policy that they do not share personal information to third parties without explicit opt-in consent. Note that this is a stronger condition than just advertisers. So what exactly is the issue?

Good point! Apple and Facebook are his competitors. But what's particularly interesting is that Microsoft did not even rate a mention. Maybe Google does not even consider Microsoft a competitor of note any more. Ballmer will be pissed. Great news for chair makers everywhere!

Microsoft has, thus far, been relatively cooperative with Android. It did bring up patents, but not in an Oracle/Apple type "Trying to shut it down" sense, just trying to get royalties from hardware manufacturers.

But Microsoft has actually produced a few software packages for Android, and shown no sign of wanting to shut it down. It's been a normal competitor from the point of view of competing products (such as Bing, Office Online, Office 365, etc) rather than a "Trying every dirty trick in the book" type thing.

If Sergey Brin is lamenting Apple's restrictive iOS platform as a threat to internet freedom, then why not get to the root cause of that restrictiveness, which is malware? Spam and malware is a huge reason why companies and developers don't adopt an "anything goes" approach.

Also, I find it highly ironic that he would point to other companies facilitating censorship by various governments, but then doesn't mention Microsoft or Google itself, which largely went along with China's censorship in order to gain market share. Furthermore, it's not as if Google makes me feel more free in terms of the information I have access too. If anything, I am constantly worried about what information they have about me, who they might allow to see that information, and whether I'm leaving a data trail on their servers that the FBI can issue a subpoena for without my knowledge. Google's ubiquity and interconnectedness across all of its services poses a risk to internet freedom through its ramifications on user privacy.

If Sergey Brin is lamenting Apple's restrictive iOS platform as a threat to internet freedom, then why not get to the root cause of that restrictiveness, which is malware?

Oh please, these apologies for Apple are getting tiresome. Apple did not lock down iOS to keep out malware, they did it so that they could remain in control of the products they sell people long after the sale is made. If this were about malware, why does Apple prevent apps that have absolutely no relation to malware from being in the app store? What the heck do political cartoons have to do with malware?

The root cause is a complete lack of respect for users: a view that users are nothing more than exploitable sources of money that need to be controlled.

The root cause is a complete lack of respect for users: a view that users are nothing more than exploitable sources of money that need to be controlled.

These are two separate things. One does not follow the other.

Personally, I tend to agree with the former sentiment. The problem exists between the keyboard and chair. Apple is attempting to remove or at least marginalize that problem.

The latter I would disagree with. They don't necessarily (or have to) see users as exploitable sources of income. But they certainly are making tons of money as a result of this abusive but seemingly successful relationship. People don't have to give Apple money if they don't like the way they're treated. There are alternatives. Yet, they still do.

Ultimately, Apple (Jobs, really) realized one fundamental sociological thing: Most people don't want freedom. It's too much for them to handle.

"Oh please, these apologies for Apple are getting tiresome. Apple did not lock down iOS to keep out malware, they did it so that they could remain in control of the products they sell people long after the sale is made."

It's the same mindset that believed Steve's FUD when he blamed publishers for DRM in iTunes, saying he wanted rid of it but they just wouldn't let him, despite the fact his competitors like Amazon and eMusic at the time despite having much smaller stores and much less clout managed to get DRM free contracts from the publishers no problem.

With Apple it's always about control, DRM in iTunes was entirely about control, it was about making sure that when the non user replaceable battery in your iPad ran out after 18 months to 2 years you couldn't fuck off to a competitor with your content very easily, no you had to buy Apple again.

The only people that haven't figured out yet that Apple's entire business model is built around controlling what you do in an effort to influence what you buy each upgrade cycle, control what you pay, and manage who you pay from and who the money goes to are fanboys. The worst sort too - the ones who can't see the evidence glaring them right in the face.

It's the same mindset that believed Steve's FUD when he blamed publishers for DRM in iTunes, saying he wanted rid of it but they just wouldn't let him, despite the fact his competitors like Amazon and eMusic at the time despite having much smaller stores and much less clout managed to get DRM free contracts from the publishers no problem.

A little history lesson....

1. When the iTunes store was first introduced, there was no way to buy individual songs from mainstream artist per song that you could basically burn to CD. Even Bill Gates said in emails that came out during trial how impressed he was at SJ's ability to negotiate such lenient restrictions.

2. The industry wanted Apple to license FairPlay to other manufacturers. Apple said no. Instead, if they were allowed to by the music companies, they would sale their music without DRM if allowed and there wouldn't be an interoperability problem. (January 2007 Steve Jobs "Thoughts on Music");

3, The music industry wanted variable prices (i.e. higher prices). Apple refused. In return, the music industry except for EMI and some independents refused to allow DRM free music.

4. Slashdot Wisdom (sic) was that Apple never intended to sale DRM free music or license FairPlay and they were waiting to call Apple's bluff.

5. Apple started selling DRM free music from EMI *before* Amazon music store came online.

6. Apple started selling the iPhone but was not allowed to sell over the cellular network without a new license. The music industry refused because Apple wouldn't sell at variable prices.

7. The music industry started letting everyone else sell DRM free music to break Apple's monopoly -- it didn't work (around August 2007).

8. Apple wanted to be able to sale music via the cell network so they caved to the variable pricing.

it was about making sure that when the non user replaceable battery in your iPad ran out after 18 months to 2 years you couldn't fuck off to a competitor with your content very easily, no you had to buy Apple again.

Do you realize how many Android phones and tablets are now coming with non-removable batteries?

With Apple it's always about control, DRM in iTunes was entirely about control, it was about making sure that when the non user replaceable battery in your iPad ran out after 18 months to 2 years you couldn't fuck off to a competitor with your content very easily, no you had to buy Apple again.

Which "content"? Apple been selling DRM free music for four years. How do you propose running even a non-DRM'd app compiled for iOS on another device?

Spelling error correction: "...information I have access to," not "too."

Also, some context: I think it goes without saying that I do not use Facebook. I've gone so far as to block all their domains in my hosts file, not to mention put email filters on anything that even mentions it, so I don't get invites. I absolutely despise it, not to mention Zuckerberg's holier-than-thou attitude (e.g., "don't put it online if you want to keep it private"). I'm also no fan of Apple--while I like some of their products, it's mainly because it's not Microsoft or Google.

The problem I have is that nobody's hands are clean. I would summarize various companies thusly:

Microsoft: We became the only game in town because we bought out or threatened everybody else, but we've become bloated and hobbled by our own incompetence.Google: We'll talk your ear off about freedom and pledge to "do no evil," but underneath it all we're really just like everyone else, hellbent on world domination--but for your own good, of course!Apple: We want to deliver you the best user experience...on the backs of Chinese factory workers. And we know what you want better than you do, because we tell you what you want.Facebook: We exploit you and give you a half-hearted apology afterward.EA: We keep raping you because for some reason, you keep coming back.Yahoo: What just happened?

When the biggest tech companies all act this way, is it any surprise that there's going to be finger-pointing and mudslinging? Fact is, nobody looks good because each is amorally driven by one goal above all else: profit, rather than ethics. And then they go about rationalizing that the pursuit of such profit and power is so that they can then be ethical, when in all cases, the exact opposite has occurred--companies become LESS ethical the more powerful they get.

If Sergey Brin is lamenting Apple's restrictive iOS platform as a threat to internet freedom, then why not get to the root cause of that restrictiveness, which is malware?

Believing that malware is the reason why Apple chose a walled-garden model for its app store requires the same degree of naivete needed to believe that child pornography is the reason why governments want to control your communications.

Seriously, how are Facebook and Apple threatening the freedom of the internet? Sure, I'm restricted if I'm using Facebook or Apple technologies, but there are literally thousands of places I can post and do whatever I want. The internet is a very big place.

Also, the other day I tried to sign up for a second Google+ account but it didn't like the names I was choosing because it didn't consider them "real" names. Seems a bit rich to be accusing others of limiting freedom.

I think the threat is that the internet will cease to be a big place outside of a handful of walled gardens, or at the very least, it's very difficult to engage in certain activities without a Facebook account.

Google is just as walled as Facebook if not more so. The real name policy for Google Plus comes to mind, especially as Google has forced integration with all of its other services. Hell, I was served with a threatening e-mail for not using my real name... and I don't even have a Google Plus account. Given that plenty of places will use your Google credentials for authentication I'm no quite sure how this is so different from Facebook.

Sure, I'm restricted if I'm using Facebook or Apple technologies, but there are literally thousands of places I can post and do whatever I want. The internet is a very big place.

So you think it is good for Internet freedom if the network is divided into little islands of technologies controlled by one specific company or another? Nothing prevents Facebook from interoperating with other social networking or communications systems -- they even have their own Jabber implementation, that could easily exchange messages with other Jabber servers.

The whole point of the Internet is that it is not fractured; another way to state this is that walled gardens are the antithesis of the Internet philosophy.

Is internet so big after all?Same question can be asked from physical location in countries.

When someone says "USA" (or any other country) to foreign person, what will rise to their minds?A geographical location in world, capital city, famous cities, media (movie, music, other industry etc) information, politics, famous people and possible family ties etc.

But how many starts thinking first all the small places? Like small towns, single unknown people, poor people, people living typical spaces, small bars an

Seriously, how are Facebook and Apple threatening the freedom of the internet? Sure, I'm restricted if I'm using Facebook or Apple technologies, but there are literally thousands of places I can post and do whatever I want. The internet is a very big place.

It's the difference between theory and practice. In theory, you can go anywhere and do whatever you want because the internet is so huge. But it does little good if it turns into a ghost town because Apple and Facebook have convinced users to trade f

The irony: this comes from a company that wants to know everything about you and shifted its entire strategy to compete with Facebook. A company currently facing DOJ and EU antitrust investigations. A company that just got fined $25,000 for obstructing an FCC investigation into Street View cars' Wi-Fi accidentally scraping personal messages and website visits.

Not to mention that Android is officially endorsed by the Chinese government as its mobile platform of choice (customized as Open Mobile System). You know, the government that has political opposition jailed, censors the Internet, and spies on its citizens in a way that makes the NSA look modest.

Look, Sergey, there are advantages to an open platform, but you're as much of a threat as the others.

Not to mention that Android is officially endorsed by the Chinese government as its mobile platform of choice (customized as Open Mobile System). You know, the government that has political opposition jailed, censors the Internet, and spies on its citizens in a way that makes the NSA look modest.

You had a reasonable post, and then you crashed it with a big, ugly association fallacy.

China chooses Android because it's OSS, meaning they can change it to their liking, just like they did with Red Flag Linux. Claiming Google is a threat because of that is ridiculous. Is Torvalds evil too? China uses his kernel!

Ah, this article is about freedom (open platforms) and not privacy. The two are not the same thing. Apple and Facebook are certainly threats to freedom (in the sense of open platforms), but both Google and Facebook are threats to privacy.

If you actually read the Guardian article, the three things Brin lists as threats are:

Government control

Piracy crackdown

Walled-garden platforms

He gives Apple and Facebook as examples of the third. Which the sensationalist media (including slashdot) twist around to try and incite a frenzy of condemnation.

The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.

"Avoiding the Privacy Apocalypse" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSYXw87BWXo [youtube.com]
Learn how Clinton era laws opened world wide telco interception as US firms wanted a level export price with the EU equipment makers.
Why should one side have to add expensive backdoors and deal with all the short term upgrade costs?
Learn how individual French school children where to be tracked and profiled by the state and what the UK wanted to do with every IM, email in real time.
The govs saw what keyword ad tracking by privacy loving US.coms could do with every word submitted -
they expected the same access.
The video is just a talk, no Q and A at the end;)

Why do you still have yours?I also don't own any Apple products, and have no plans to buy any in the future, either; I don't recommend anyone buy those, either.

I'd like to remind everyone that you don't need any of these things in your life in order to have a happy, productive life, and in my opinion you're more likely to have a happy, productive life if you don't have them. While you're at it, stop wasting money on cable and satellite TV, and smartphones and the overpriced data plans that they come with, too. Read more books, interact with more people in person, and go outside more often and move your bodies around. I can almost guarantee that these things will make your healthier and happier than what they're replacing.

Aside from throwing mud at Google's competitors, he is deliberately mistaking Web for Web Search. A library is the books in it, not the book index, and some of the books are in the "restricted" area. So what?

As a matter of fact, Apple is a much smaller danger to Internet freedom than Google.A person can easily avoid using Apple products or systems (and save a ton of money while doing so). They are popular, but surely not mandatory. It is trivial to buy hardware and software that is not made by Apple (and most of the world still does:) )

At the same time, it's very hard to escape Google tentacles. Large percentage of web sites (perhaps majority) use Google-provided webmaster tools to track visitors and send information back to Google. So, unless user employs fairly sophisticated tools and does so very consistently - the only way to avoid Google grasp is to use virtually no Internet at all (certainly not for web browsing of any kind). That's a pretty big threat if you ask me.

But hey, what's obvious facts vs. Sergey bashing some of his biggest competitors:)

I'd argue that any organization, whether it be a Government or an business having control over the internet is a direct threat to it. Including Google. I think the one thing that the internet has taught us is just how shackled we were before it came along. The guards are quickly trying to put the chains back in place, and in fact, replacing the older ones with new and improved ones. We must all hope, that we'll eventually find a way to communicate that can not be controlled, monitored, manipulated... Technology is both freedom and a prison.

I agree with Sergey. Facebook and other such sites represent the opposite of what the Internet was meant to be. Instead of creating an open facebook or twitter protocol for anyone to implement, they've closed it off and put a wall around their own little internet. Imagine the same was done in the early days; instead of SMTP we'd just have Hotmail. Instead of HTTP we'd have AOL.
Eeeewww

But worse at what? The article title mentions that it is in regards to "internet freedom". From this perspective there is no comparing Apple to Microsoft - Apple pushes for standards and Microsoft attempted to lock users to Internet Explorer based technologies. Remember the days before OSX and Firefox - one would constantly run into sites that required IE and Windows.

I'm not going to try to defend Apple with regards to other issues, but you really can't compare them to Microsoft wrt "internet freedom"

Apple pushes for standards? No, not really. For example, they're the only browser maker that does not employ _anyone_ to work on CSS specs. Google, Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla all have employees doing so. Apple? Not so much.

Oh, and the little bit about waiting until touch events were just about standardized in the W3C (without Apple's involvement, because they chose to not join the working group), then declare they have patents on the standard as written and they refuse to license them. Had they joined the working group, they would have had to disclose this much earlier in theprocess, but it's in Apple's interest to have touch events working better in iOS than in web pages, so people create iOS-specific content and not HTML that works on all devices.

The result of all of which is that if you browse on a phone or tablet you constantly run into sites that require WebKit, and more often than not require Mobile Safari to render right.

Apple _does_ however try hard to make it _look_ like it's pushing for standards. I'll grant you that much. And it's not trying to monopolize the internet; just to slow down its development so it won't compete on a level playing field with iOS as an application delivery platform.

Apple pushes for standards? No, not really. For example, they're the only browser maker that does not employ _anyone_ to work on CSS specs. Google, Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla all have employees doing so. Apple? Not so much.

Oh, and the little bit about waiting until touch events were just about standardized in the W3C (without Apple's involvement, because they chose to not join the working group), then declare they have patents on the standard as written and they refuse to license them. Had they joined the working group, they would have had to disclose this much earlier in theprocess, but it's in Apple's interest to have touch events working better in iOS than in web pages, so people create iOS-specific content and not HTML that works on all devices.

Apple does have people working on CSS standards. They also have people working to patent the implementations to those standards too (pay attention to the patent applications--there's a surprise coming in the next six months or so).

Apple pushes for standards? No, not really. For example, they're the only browser maker that does not employ _anyone_ to work on CSS specs. Google, Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla all have employees doing so. Apple? Not so much.

Exactly. Google is on their own out there, without any help from Apple. Thank goodness they came up with WebKit to build Chrome wi...

Wait, what's that? WebKit is actually Apple's project? Apple encouraged web rendering standards compliance so much they actually help support Google in using their web renderer on a competing platform?

Don't confuse "open source project" or even "open governance project" with "pushes for standards". Apple pushes for standards exactly when it suits them, in other cases it simply ignores them, and in yet other cases it actively obstructs them.

I gave two concrete examples: -webkit-text-size-adjust and touch events.

They also volunteered to edit a few CSS specs (transitions, animations, transforms) and then did absolutely nothing. At this point other editors are working on it, but the specs won't be done until much later than otherwise; had Apple been honest that they had no plans to actually work on them, someone else would have picked them up much earlier.

They obviously can't _block_ standards forever, with the exception of patents they refuse to license (and in that situation the standard would be changed to work around the patent). But they're sure trying to make the sure the standards process is as slow as it can be in many cases.

> Which brings them no value.

Sure it brings them value. It keeps Google from forking WebKit. How is that not value for Apple?

> They ported to Windows, which doesn't really give> them much.

They ported to Windows because they thought they would get something out of it (e.g. maybe market share for Safari on Windows).

The problem is not the patent disclosure. That's normal, and required for W3C members.

The problem is deliberately not joining the working group so they could disclose the patents as late as they could in the standards process, and thus make it take as long as possible to standardize touch events.

Again, the issue is whether Apple is actually "pushing for standards" or whether they're "delaying them as much as possible". In many cases, it's the latter.

Webkit isn't Apple's project. WebKit was around for years before Safari came about - since 1998, when KHTML was released. It wasn't called WebKit until Apple forked it.

Yeah, that's right. It's successful because it forked from an Open Source project.

Ironically, Safari has always managed to languish behind the other WebKit based browsers in terms of actual functionality. Word has it that WebKit2 will likely just be a backport of features which have been in Chrome for some time...

Microsoft is the only company I can think of that actually tried to monopolize the internet.

better think a bit harder.

every company wants the internet to themselves. Google was probably the first to really go for it, then Facebook try to make their own internet locked off from the prying eyes of search engines... who knows, maybe Pinterest and Twitter will ally and raise an army?

the problem is - internet users own the internet. it's the 20th/21st century's ultimate gift to individual freedom. of course, you can't monetize the "free" in freedom, but many will try.

as far as MS goes... you could always install whatever you liked on your machine. Apple is not following that business model. they started with iOS, and they're rapidly porting the walled garden to their desktops as well (as they become less relevant as tablets, phones, etc become the preferred browsing platforms).

let's see how far you get installing Firefox, Opera or Chrome on an iPad....and just like with nations, our freedoms are being taken away under the guise of improved security.

Correction, Apple pushes for locked standards (h.264 codec, anyone?). Pushing a standard isn't always inline with pushing towards a free and open internet if the standards require putting the implementors at the mercy of patent holders who may or may not choose to squeeze them for every dime they have.

If by "push for standards" you mean "lock in to proprietary iOS", then yes, Apples supports standards.

If you're talking about their recent retreat on IPv6 support, then no, Apple does not support standards.

Both Apple and Microsoft support standards when it suits their list of checklist customer requirements, and do their damndest to lock in their customer base once they've gotten sign-off on the initial deployment.

Hell, even companies like IBM, Oracle, Sybase, et. al. try to lock people and companies

And what if you were referring to Apple's involvement in the calendaring (CardDAV, CalDAV) working groups? Multicast DNS (Bonjour)? How about HTTP live streaming? Is Apple perfect? No. Is Apple anywhere near as nefarious as Google or Rambus? No. At least with Apple I am their *customer*. With Google and Facebook, I'm the product.

Slashdot has fallen quite a bit for such a misinformed, rambling post gets modded insightful.

It really comes down to the founders of the companies. Microsoft has taken on the personality of Bill Gates - lacks imagination, cares more about money than good products, etc.

You're projecting a lot of MS's business practices onto Bill Gates, conveniently ignoring the other players. Someone who lacks imagination does not drop out of Harvard to start a new company that managed to revolutionize desktop computing.

Someone who cares more about money than good products would not start the Buffets-Gate Giving Pledge, and contribute significant portion of their wealth via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Apple has taken on the personality of Steve Jobs with a little bit of Woz thrown in - obsessive compulsive about solid products with good design, outwardly controlling but hacker friendly at heart.

OTOH, Steve Jobs cut all corporate charity programs after taking over in 1997.

While the original Apple products where hacker friendly, that certainly was not the case after Steve Jobs returned.

The reason Apple is kicking ass right now is because it does such a good job at constantly producing products that work well, look good, and don't change dramatically all the time. They may not have the highest specs at any given time but the user knows what to expect and that they can expect a pretty good device.When people say Apple is evil it just tells me they don't own any Apple products and know nothing of Apple's history. They're usually wannabe nerds that can barely use anything other than Windows and usually they think their awesome at Linux because they've managed to install the flavor of the month baby distro. They think hacking is taking a device that was expressly made for being hacked and following step by step directions. Probably they have absolutely no sense of taste either - they think their Dell Inspiron One is comparable to an iMac.

This is a load of fanboy horseshit I'm not going to even bother debunking.

Apple after Steve Jobs. POSIX. Intel x86 hardware. OS X with about half the components open source and hosted by Apple. Bought and maintain CUPS, the printing system for both OS X and Linux (with Linux support still going strong.)

After Steve Jobs, Apple went from a fully closed company to a half open, which is certainly more hacker friendly than it used to be. After Jobs, you could actually download and modify th

The Apple II was more open by far than the macintosh, which is where steve jobs took the helm and directed them down the closed path. The only reason os x has anything to do with unix and bsd is the fact that copland (the original successor to the old mac os) was an abysmal failure and taking far too long.

Apple (well more appropriately at the time NeXt) used open source technology when it couldn't be bothered to develop it's own (which is fine) and then placed proprietary things on top of it to lock people

You mean back in the days of the original Mac with no slots or expansion? Or Apple providing absolutely no source code to users from it's inception? Or Apple not allowing competitors to run it's OS and suing them if they tried, which happened frequently with the Apple II?

I'm really struggling to see how Apple today is less hacker friendly than the Apple of the early 80s. I can still go out today and buy a Mac with four expansion slots, four open drive bays, two optical drive bays, upgradable RAM, and replac

1. Microsoft & Bill Gates have no imagination and style. They make crappy products and only care about your money. (Almost a line verbatim from The Saviour(TM) himself).
2. Apple is wonderful and has the soul of Woz.
3. People who install Linux and install "the baby distro" (which is what, exactly? Some super easy to use Linux distro that does everything for you and doesn't need a CLI ever - coz that would be wonderful for the year of the linux desktop) are idiots.
4. People who follow HOWTOS are not smart.
5. Dell are ugly and Apple are beautiful.

Either you're a complete fanboy or you work for Apple marketing or are you just out of touch completely.

Apple hasn't had the soul of Woz since the early 80's. You might not have noticed but Apple is very, very concerned with making money and very, very concerned with not letting people "hack" their devices. They go out of their way to make jailbreaking difficult and every update tries to re-imprison jailbroken phones. Apple are in no way hacker friendly. Not even a little bit. Apple has the soul of Steve Jobs and if Bill Gates had no imagination and only cared about money then Steve Jobs had dreams only of destroying competition and being a total control freak.

I'm typing this on my MBA, btw. I'm not an Apple hater - but you're living in a dream world if you genuinely believe what you wrote above.

A Dell Inspiron is comparable to an iMac. A whitebox from your local PC shop is comparable to an iMac. All home computers are comparable to an iMac - that's why they're in competition with one another and that's why the iMac doesn't sell anywhere near as many as the Dells and the Whiteboxes.

The reason Apple is kicking arse right now is because they're selling completely (to the masses) unhackable appliance fashion devices, like iPods, iPhone and iPads - not because Apple Computer sales are up because they're still not really any higher than they've ever been.

One of the replies points to the non-technical problem with Tor on iOS, which is that Apple rejected it from the App Store as being a "proxy or circumvention tool." This is not terribly surprising, of course: Apple would not want to anger governments by shipping a platform that allows iOS users to evade national firewalls.

Well - is "freezing the market" into a form where anyone cal play; where you don't have to be one of a half dozen giants to be a content generator, or to write software, really freezing it?

Or, to put it another way... if you say that the market will remain open (for even the current limited definition of open), as opposed to "evolving" into a truly locked and controlled market, is this a bad thing?

This attitude is our very own fault. Yes, ours. The fault of those that built the internet and thought it's a great idea to let everyone in.

We built a garden. A beautiful garden. We saw it was vast and lush and we started planting our seeds and grew trees and flowers and we thought it's great. Sure, some were better gardeners than others, but in general, we were happy to just watch it grow. And if someone wanted to plant himself and he didn't know how to, we were just happy to lend him a hand.

And we looked over our garden an we thought it's so great that the world should see it. Everyone should come in, they'd all start to plant something, people would take our seeds and grow something new out of them, think of the possibilities! We'll have plants we can't even imagine yet and we'll all share them and enjoy their fruits!

We thought that everyone would be like us.

Of course, there was the odd vandal. But they were few and far between, and we knew how to use our shovels not only to dig dirt but also graves for those trolls. They were a nuisance, but not really a threat. Besides, we knew how to build fences around our gardens if they grew too cocky. Sometimes, the fences were electric...

Time went by and people peeked into our garden. They thought it's neat, but then... they had no idea how to walk through it. It was so strange, no paths, no roads, and climbing over hedges ain't for everyone. They'd come, they said, but not if they had to cross-country hike to get from one field to the next. We agreed and we thought that it's maybe not the worst idea to build some paths, not only for them but also ourselves. It's easier to navigate that way, ya know? And that way we can also invite friends over who ain't so great gardeners. And maybe we can ease them in that way and get them to learn how to grow fruits, they'll love it.

So we thought.

But they weren't. They were mostly interested in the fruits. They went from garden to garden, picked some fruits, wolfed them down or just took a bite and threw the rest away... we were disgusted, but hey, who cares? There's plenty of fruit for everyone. Besides, we didn't really build that many paths to the patches under the camo net. Just sometimes we took a friend along there to... relax. Ya know...

But free fruit? How dare you not make a buck from people wanting something! In came the corporations and they settled in our garden. But we didn't care too much, I mean, it's not like there ain't enough room for everyone. Sure, they take up a lot of room and a few of us had to move away because they muscled in, but we just rolled our eyes and moved aside. They won't stay for long anyway, we said, they'll soon figure out that there ain't a buck to be made in here, for we give our fruit away for free, why would anyone buy theirs?

In the meantime, the people we built the paths for, the non-gardeners, started to settle in. I mean, hey, it IS a nice place after all, so why not try to plant something themselves? Or at least take some fruits, place them somewhere and claim they grew them. We knew they couldn't, but hey, why bother complaining? We knew better, and nobody else counts, right? And if they got too cocky, we just went there and showed them who's boss in here. Someone barely able to wield a shovel has no chance to build a fence that could stand against an assault from us!

Of course, they could have learned to build fences. And we actually expected them to after we showed them that gardens are fragile if you cannot protect them. Instead, they cried foul and pointed at us, labeled us the bogeyman and yelled for the police to come and take us away, for we are a danger to them. The corporations were happy to chime in, after some of us who have been pushed away found out that their fences ain't worth the wood they were built of either. Now, in general that didn't really bother us at first, only when they started to peek under our camo nets it got a tad bit uncomfortable. It was kinda hard to explain what we grew th

I would not hate Apple if they were not the control freaks that they are. If you deal with Apple in anyway, they own you. iTunes is exactly the type of control over the users that China and Iran want over their citizens.

This is a bit of hyperbole.

iTunes cares not where you get your music. You can get it of CD, and you can feed it in MP3s or AACs from competing services. It's sync software, with a store you can optionally use attached. Apple also does not block competing music stores and services from publishing apps.

Last I checked, Iran and China both care where you get your web content, unlike iTunes.